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ClickFix attacks infecting PCs and Macs are going viral

11 September 2026 at 12:30

It wasn’t that long ago that ClickFix attacks were exotic. Now the technique has become mainstream as attackers reap its simplicity and effectiveness in infecting users of PCs and Macs alike. All that’s required is a compromised website—a painless enough task—a fake CAPTCHA overlay, and the inclusion of a single terminal command. So many visitors get suckered into pasting and running the command that just about every malware pusher has adopted the technique. Even Kremlin-backed hacking groups are joining in.

“Reddit is becoming post after post after post of people getting their computer infected via ClickFix,” independent researcher Kevin Beaumont observed Thursday. “Legit websites everywhere [are] getting hacked to serve the fake captcha prompts.”

How many of us make things worse

More seasoned Internet users—a fair number who read this site—are quick to dismiss the attack. They typically blame the people who fall for the scams and marvel at their gullibility and lack of attention. The reality is that for more casual users, using computers and the Internet has become so difficult—think impossible-to-close interstitials, CAPTCHAs with an endless series of pictures to analyze, and constantly changing interfaces that bury the features they’re looking for—that they have grown desensitized to instructions that seem ridiculous and burdensome.

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Now, even Russia's most elite hackers are using Clickfix to infect devices

16 July 2026 at 20:28

One of the Russian government’s most elite hacking groups has adopted an attack, known as Clickfix, to compromise devices belonging to sensitive organizations in Ukraine, the latter country’s CERT center is warning.

Clickfix has emerged as an effective attack technique that attackers, primarily financially motivated criminals, began using in the last year or so. Websites under the control of the attackers display a CAPTCHA that requires the visitor to copy a jumble of text and paste it into the terminal. The text contains scripts that, once entered, perform malicious actions, typically by installing malware or exfiltrating sensitive data. Ukraine’s CERT said Wednesday that Sandworm, an advanced hacking unit inside the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence arm, is now using the technique.

"GhettoVibe," "ScoutCurl," and many more

The Clickfix attacks began in the spring and have continued through the summer. The campaign has resulted in the network compromise of at least one organization when a connected device was found to be infected by FreakyPoll, the name of one of Sandworm’s custom malware packages. Ukrainian authorities discovered 10 compromised websites that displayed a PowerShell command as part of a fake CAPTCHA that said it had to be passed to ensure a real human was behind the visiting device’s keyboard.

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Novo malware usa CAPTCHA falso para roubar senhas no macOS

17 July 2026 at 20:21

Pesquisadores da Group-IB apontaram a existência de um novo malware para macOS chamado ClickLock Stealer, que usa uma falsa verificação da Cloudflare para enganar os usuários, roubando dados sensíveis.

Mirando usuários na Itália, nos Estados Unidos, na Jordânia e no Reino Unido, os criminosos iniciam o ataque simulando uma verificação de CAPTCHA da Cloudflare e, na sequência, convencem a vítima a copiar e colar um comando no Terminal do Mac.

Após a execução, o malware é instalado enquanto exibe uma falsa tela de progresso. Se o usuário optar por tentar interromper a instalação ou não seguir de alguma forma com o processo, ele fecha todos os aplicativos visíveis, deixando apenas uma janela para inserir a senha do macOS. O ciclo de insistência do software pode passar dos 3 dias (algo em torno de 83 horas, segundo o estudo).

Depois de instalado, o malware começa a coletar senhas de navegadores, extensões de carteiras de criptomoedas, arquivos de carteiras digitais, dados de gerenciadores de senhas e outras informações comprometedoras.

Segundo os especialistas, o ClickLock Stealer começou a ser distribuído em maio passado, passando despercebido por todos os mecanismos de pesquisa até recentemente. Ele foi identificado em 33 países, em sua maioria europeus, sem veiculação a algum grupo de crime cibernético, distribuído muito possivelmente por uma campanha de engenharia social do tipo ClickFix.

O estudo recomenda aos usuários que nunca colem comandos de websites no Terminal, independentemente de como a página se parece ou do que ela alega fazer, e a nunca entregar a sua senha a espaços extraoficiais (como comandos) — caso você perceba que a execução de outros aplicativos está sendo encerrada. Se você desconfiar que a sua máquina foi infectada com o malware, revogue as sessões dos seus navegadores e altere todas as credenciais potencialmente comprometidas.

via Macworld

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